Jim Westrich wrote:
> Dr. Ubel not only misses the possibility that the subjective experience
> of being disabled is "normal" (and hence utility of 1), he forces some
> problematic objective measure on them and finds that they are necessarily
> less than normal.
Jim -- and others You may be interested in Ron Amundson's paper on normality from a disability perspective. He knows Gould (Gould has an autistic son) and corresponded with Lewontin before writing it so it uses Lewontin-ish views of the relation between genes, organism, and environment in support progressive disability politics. Against Normal Function [Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31C, 2000, 33-53]
I can email this one off list to anyone who may be interested.
A detailed examination of the normality assumptions among contemporary biomedical ethicists can be found in:
Silvers, Anita (1998) 'A Fatal Attraction to Normalizing', in Erik Parens (Ed), Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press), pp. 95-123.
I don't have this one.
Marta